lusterniafandomcom-20200216-history
Report 1574
Report #1574 Skillset: Skill: Protection/Dissolve Org: Minstrels Status: Completed Jan 2017 Furies' Decision: Solutions 1, 2, and 3. Problem: Two issues: 1) A recent (good) change has been that melds dissolve upon the death of the melder. While this is overall a positive change, it makes it more likely that a melder will sit out of a fight, standing a room away, to help prevent the loss of the meld. Melds in general are necessary components to any large group fight. 2) Dissolve/Protection are odd mechanics. Some meld effects are stopped by protection being up, but there is no opportunity cost to the melder to dissolve protection due to the fact that dissolve does not require equilibrium to use. It only requires balance, so a melder can use an eq-based skill and follow up with a dissolve. There is also no cost to attempting to dissolve someone without protection. This allows melders to send 'dissolve ' on every enemy and they will never waste that balance. Protection on the other hand does have an opportunity cost in that it costs equilbrium to put up. This means you can stop your offense to put up protection, just to have it stripped immediately again at no cost to the melder. It's not really worthwhile to put protection back up in the middle of combat. The following are some changes to protection/dissolve mechanics that will have little effect on 1v1, make 'playing it safe' strategies less effective and encourage the melder to be more involved in the fight. It changes the dissolve/protection mechanics encourage the use of protection and the more heads up use of dissolve. R: 0 Solution #1: Change dissolve to take balance if a mage attempts to dissolve someone without protection up. This should be the same balance it takes when it's successful. Additionally Change Protection scroll from requiring and consuming equilbrium to require and consume scroll balance. R: 0 Solution #2: Give melders a 5p ability that will strip protection and cause a loss of scroll balance for 5s. This will give a large window for the melder to ensure that the entire meld hit has a chance to hit the entire group. R: 0 Solution #3: Have unleash staff do reduced damage (25-33% less) to targets with protection up. Player Comments: ---on 12/4 @ 05:13 writes: I'm okay with all of these, although I think in the case of solution 1 that just moving protection scroll to scroll balance is a significant enough nerf without also making the mage track who has reapplied the scroll. I think that change will just mean that systems will be created to track who has read the protection scroll anyway so in the long term I don't think it will change combat much rather the burden will be shifted to individual systems. ---on 12/4 @ 13:54 writes: @Wobou - I'm okay with that. The idea is it takes effort (whether through systems and tracking, or individual effort) to keep protection off people and you can't just send 'dissolve on every enemy in the room. It's about 5 seconds from reading a protection scroll to protection actually being put up that a melder paying attention could ideally keep two people dissolved if they are paying attention. ---on 12/4 @ 21:12 writes: I still prefer an alternative solution where we get rid of protection and introduce a way for melders to focus effects on one person, so they receive the full brunt of the meld effects while everyone else gets affected less. Melds are too powerful in groups, and arguably not powerful enough in 1v1 (at least for some melds). This would give us a means towards achieving a fairer balance between the two. ---on 12/5 @ 11:07 writes: I would opt to delete protection completely. ---on 12/5 @ 15:41 writes: This would encourage melders to put themselves at more risk, though it would also weaken melder aoe power, as they couldn't keep protection off of multiple people nearly as well. That's not necessarily bad, but should be stated. ---on 12/7 @ 02:52 writes: Counter solution: remove Dissolve, have Protection be a Highmagic/Lowmagic skill that costs power to put up and lasts for a temporary time. I was thinking 3 power for 2 minutes. ---on 12/14 @ 15:54 writes: Solution 1 will have an impact on 1v1 with changing protection scroll to healing scroll balance. Protection scroll is the artifact of a time when melds were huge, effects struck across the entire demesne, and it took more work to knock down the demesne. It prevents melders from doing too much at range. Now that the melder being in the room comes at even more of a risk - as they can lose the entire demesne on dying - making it even harder for the effects to hit group targets is not the way to go. It's just going to end up extending feast-or- famine balancing that is already the driving force and dominant issue with melders. No support for Solution 1, I agree with Falmiis that what's needed is removing (or reworking) this outdated patch on melds (instead of dramatically buffing it without addressing issues with it and with the mechanic it patches) and reworking things from there. Solution 3 is good. Solution 2 should cost 3p at most and be assigned to the WHIRL STAFF syntax, which otherwise does nothing worth keeping. ---on 12/20 @ 21:58 writes: I support the premise of this report; melds have always had too high of an impact on group combat. I think these changes bring meld effects more in line with bard songs, which are still quite impactful but do have acceptable limitations and counters. I believe that any general nerfs to melds will make group combat more enjoyable for melders, who will not necessarily have to be the default first target because of their undeniable significance to the outcome of group battles. I would just recommend that Solution 3 also include a caveat to lower the mana cost of unleash, given that melders are being more encouraged to fight in the group as opposed to standing a room away. I'd also probably advocate for dissolve costing balance and eq. ---on 12/21 @ 15:24 writes: @Synkarin: I wouldn't call the system tracking it any kind of effort. It would just punish people who don't have a system to take care of it for them which from my understanding is the opposite of the direction that we are supposed to be going in the overhaul. @Falmiis: I like the idea of stealing the focus command from chems and applying it to 'regular' mages/druids. You could implement the muted effects on others that you're talking about by making the effects treat everyone who is not your focus as if they have protection up, whether they do or not. Then you could possibly add some buffs/nerfs (but probably mostly buffs) to effects if you are focusing someone to tweak 1v1 performance. ---on 1/16 @ 07:12 writes: Sounds great, helps balance melds more ---on 1/23 @ 14:10 writes: I feel that solution 2 combined with solution 1 would mean that this new ability could be used to strip healing scroll balance right before meld hit. Not much of a deal, but I thought I'd point it out. ---on 1/24 @ 18:42 writes: 5p is too expensive on solution 2. Reduce the power cost to 3. I hope we'll see some reports to shift the focus of mages and druids at least a little bit away from melding or towards survivability with the repeated heavy and dramatic nerfs to melding.